


unstoppable

by mikkal



Series: sleeping at last (oct '19) [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, Pre-Canon, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 04:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20860532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkal/pseuds/mikkal
Summary: Storming a base shouldn't be this difficult, even if there are four tagalongs, but when betrayal happens there's nothing they can do but try and make it through.Whumptober 2019. Day 2: Explosion.





	unstoppable

**Author's Note:**

> a mild companion to war ready, which is another Nyx POV of a young Noctis in battle. But this isn't a sequel. 
> 
> originally the title was supposed to refer to Noctis and Nyx as a tag team, but then the ending came and, well, you'll see :D

The silence is stifling. It sits on the eye of a pin, teetering on the edge of just too much.

Nyx knows better not to hold his breath as he waits. The same can’t be said for the kid next to him, ten years younger than him at twenty years old, most of the prince’s retinue count as kids to him. He thought Ignis to be the most levelheaded of them but based on the fact the man doesn’t seem to be breathing as the anticipation reaches painful levels, he guesses he was wrong.

He nudges him with an elbow, startling him into sucking in a breath. It seems to trigger a response of rapid breaths, which is better than not breathing in the end. Ignis side eyes him, eyebrow raised, grip still tight around his daggers like a good little soldier despite not actually being one. Not that Nyx can claim the job for himself. After all, Kingsglaive are more like attack dogs than anything else. Quick. Vicious. Feral. All the nasty things the high-born Crownsguard like to mutter under their breath, they’re lucky it’s not actually true or they would be in for a world of hurt.

“Calm down,” Nyx tells him out of the corner of his mouth. Ignis scoffs before deliberately slowing his inhales and holding them before exhaling. Slowly, surely, he visibly relaxes even if it’s forced.

And they lapse into silence again, hidden as the sun sinks fully behind the tree line. Nyx can see the soft glow of Crowe’s fire from the look-out on the far side of the fort between them. Formouth Garrison is quieter than what would warrant an entire group of Kingsglaive and a company of regular army troopers, but the reports said the Empire had been trying to take the old Lucian fort for their own for months now and the hunters nearby clinched the need to send them out.

Why the king decided to send his teenage son and his friends, not even Drautos can answer that.

They made a plan and that plan involves their prince sneaking in with Pelna and Luche to disable the MT enhancer Niflheim managed to erect without them noticing, leaving Nyx here with Libertus and Ignis then Crowe in the lookout with Gladiolus and Prompto. He doesn’t understand why got paired up with the closest thing to a mage out of the retinue instead of the brute force and the long-ranged gunner. Crowe would’ve been a better idea.

Prince Noctis is eighteen and fully grown into his inheritance even if he is still half-trained. He’s powerful, more powerful than he should be Libertus claims, and he can be quiet as a mouse when he wants to be. Pelna knows magitek like the back and front of his hand. And Luche…well, Luche is Luche and that’s all that can be said about him.

“He’ll be fine,” Nyx whispers. Even Libertus grunts an affirmative which is high praise from him.

Ignis’ lips press into a thin line and his gloves creak as he tightens his grip even more around the daggers. Lightning sparks across the blades, so quick Nyx thinks it’s a trick of the light as floodlights snap on in the garrison (for the first time since the reports came in), but when he inches closer to the kid, the hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

Elemental magic? Now he _really _wishes Crowe got Ignis.

“Protective much?” Libertus says. Ignis glares at him over the rim of his glasses.

Nyx ignores them as he checks the time, clocking it at near eleven. Dark enough for daemons. Any minute now—

_BOOM!_ And that’s not the sound of the enhancer exploding into a thousand little pieces. Well, shit.

The shrieking cries of MTs fill the air just before another explosion goes off, this one of lightning instead of fire, and the sound of gunfire scatters into the night. Ignis lunges forward, daggers at the ready, but Nyx grabs his shoulder and yanks him back behind him.

“No,” he says sharply. “Follow my lead.” Then he’s moving, as silent as a coeurl, his own kukris already in hand.

They don’t have comm. units, the enhancement field killing the short-range waves. Crowe is competent enough to know when to go in, so she’s probably infiltrating the other side already, but he doesn’t know about the army troops. Not to shit on their skills or training, he’s just never spent much time with regular troopers.

He needn’t worry. Already the gunfire from the troopers joins the MTs and regular imperial soldiers. The front doors are wide open invitingly, thanks to Pelna. At least that part of the plan went right. Nyx, Libertus, and Ignis ride the flow of Lucian soldiers into the heart of the fort.

Ignis flanks him and stays there, lashing out with his daggers when MTs get too close, pulling out fancy flips and cartwheels that gain enough air Nyx faintly wonders if he really isn’t using magic. He has to rely on Nyx to warp-strike further ones, though, and then has to jog to catch up. Libertus lets out a war cry, sweeping out with his great sword like a storm, taking out five MTs in one hit.

“Nyx!” Crowe’s familiar voice cuts through the chaos. Soot streaks across her face, the sleeve of her jacket is smoldering. Gladiolus looks a bit worse for wear, something telling Nyx he must’ve shoved himself in front of some of the close ranged attacks and—oh. Okay, Prompto and Crowe are both long-range even if one’s a gunner and the other a mage, Gladiolus would’ve been the only one to catch the melee combat. Wow, now he feels kind of stupid for not realizing that sooner. Prompto looks a little freaked, but the grip on his gun is steady.

“What happened?” she demands when they finally meet up.

Another explosion rattles the ground before anyone can answer, frost and smoke billows on the other side of the wall that will take twists and turns to get to that they just can’t afford to take. The familiar creaking groan of a magitek armor on the move makes them all freeze for a split second before they’re scrambling in the direction of the explosions, the enhancer, and the MAs. The troopers can take care of the mooks.

Nyx looks left then right and goes in the opposite direction of the group, launching a kukri to a good warp-point on a walkway. He ignores Crowe’s shout as he follows his weapon into the ether, pops out hanging from the grip, then swings up to flip onto the walkway.

From here he can see the warp-points that, if he’s careful and flippy enough, can take him to the top of the wall separating him from whatever the hell is going on.

“I’ll meet you on the other side!” he shouts down.

“Ulric!” Ignis yells, pissed off. Smoke smolders from his daggers and Nyx can’t help but grin at the sight, kind of giddy at the unrestrained magic the kid is showing off. More magic than a mere Crownsguard can lay claim to. And to think he’s tapping into a prince’s power, not the king’s.

Nyx gives him a jaunty salute. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he’s okay.” Now he has to ignore the insults and curses from the Shield as well as he takes aim for another point. The only reason Prompto’s quiet, he bets, is either because he’s too nervous to actually speak or too busy doing his actual job instead of worrying about what Nyx is doing.

“Uh, guys? A little help here!” Case in point.

He warps and warps, killing snipers and riflemen when he comes across them, ignoring the miasma pouring from them. They don’t move like the axemen or assassins, who jerk around like puppets and don’t seem to realize they’ve been injured until they literally collapse and disappear. But what they do have in common, is the daemon-like miasma that comes from the seams of their armor and the rasping, tortured screams of the dying.

They’re harder to kill. What usually takes one or two hits, takes four or five. Their attacks do more than sting, their reflexes are faster. Damn, the empire really came up with something good in that enhancer.

Eventually, he makes it to a window ledge of some sort of tower that will let him warp to, what he hopes, is the wide surface of the top of the wall. Yet _another_ explosion sets off. Blizzard again, fire follows it. A MA goes crashing down, all sorts of metal on metal shrieks, and the resulting explosion of that nearly makes him lose his grip.

He pulls himself up with one arm, curling up to try and peek over the wall only to see the tips of another MA. _“Fuck_,” he hisses then warps to the wall.

Nyx scrambles to the top, crouching for balance, and takes a quick survey of the battlefield. Already he can identify the broken remains of a MA Hoplomachus and sees one more taking shots at the familiar warping blue form of Prince Noctis.

Damn, those are pretty tough MAs for a simple base, what the hell?

Noctis stumbles on his next appearance, ducking behind an inert dropship. Luche is nowhere to be seen. Pelna is scrambling from the other side of the battlefield in the direction of the prince’s location, doing his best to stay out of sight of the Hoplomachus. There aren’t any imperial soldiers here, or MTs.

He frowns at that before raising an arm and warp-striking the MA with as much force he can muster. It goes down and it goes down hard, falling back and struggling to pick itself up. Nyx leaps back and lets loose a Thundara spell. The lightning cracks and burns, but not in time.

The Hoplomachus sets out screaming missiles. Four of them to be exact. Heat seeking made to go for human-like temperatures, ignoring daemons and MTs who are colder and MAs and fire-based daemons who are hotter. Which means—

Nyx warps like his life depends on it. And the missile aiming for him explodes in his empty spot. Pelna is lucky enough to be too far away for even that kind of attack. But Noctis.

Noctis tries to lunge out from his cover, only to fall short without warping. He’s not fast enough, raising his sword to throw it just as the missiles fall around him. He screams. Oh, Astrals, Nyx could go his entire life without hearing screams like that. Never mind the screams of his fallen glaives, who are adults and more or less picked this role to play. Hearing what is basically a teenager screaming in pain and fear, fire burning around him and through him, makes his ears ring and bile rise.

“_Pelna_!” Nyx roars and he’s not even halfway through the name before Pelna has his own daggers and is attacking the Hoplomachus in its downed state.

Then he’s running towards the prince, swearing and cursing and using his daggers to warp even though he shouldn’t risk it. He doesn’t know what’s coming up, he doesn’t know where Luche is. Even if he doesn’t hit stasis as quickly as the prince or the newbies or even the mages considering how much effort it takes to cast spells, warping is a drainer and he’s the best at warping so he’s going to do it.

But he can’t get the screams out of his head.

Noctis isn’t writhing on the ground when he arrives, not like he expects. He’s on his knees, back curled over his legs, one arm wrapped around his chest as the other uses his engine blade to stay up right.

“Shit, prince,” Nyx says, dropping to his own knees next to him and ignoring the still hot ground, hands hovering helplessly. There isn’t an inch of him not covered in burns already glistening in the blinding floodlights. “What the hell happened?”

Noctis glances up at him through his fringe, mouth open as he pants. His eyes are far too blue, bright with pain and something more. “The Hoplomachus,” he murmurs, vowels shifting oddly from the pain.

Thunder crashes behind Nyx. “Pelna’s taking care of that. We’ve gotta get you out of here. That chamberlain of yours is going to have my head.”

He chokes on a laugh. “Not before he has mine.” He wiggles his fingers in the air and a potion drops out. Without hesitation, he cracks the bottle and green shimmers around him, sinking into his skin and taking some of the bite out of his wounds but not enough. “We had it.”

Nyx falters. “Had what?”

Noctis pinches two fingers together. “I was this close,” he says. “I saw a weak point and I was gonna warp strike it.” His volume fades in and out, but he’s not stuttering. His hands shake, his ears leak blood. He starts to heave himself up with his sword as a crutch and his knees buckle. When Nyx catches him, he cries out in pain before he chokes on it.

“Tell me when we get out of here,” Nyx says.

He shakes his head. “_No_.” The forcefulness of it, reeking of royalty and power, stops Nyx in his tracks. “It was Luche,” he says, turning those bright blue eyes up to Nyx. The ground trembles as the Hoplomachus explodes finally, they both pause to hear Pelna shout his status, before they turn back to each other, tension rising. “They knew we were here. Luche told them.”

Nyx stares at him in horror. “You’re kidding,” he says weakly even though Noctis’ words hit something too close to home, too true.

“You know I’m not,” Noctis replies solemnly. In this moment, he doesn’t look eighteen and fresh-faced. He looks aged by decades and world weary.

The moment is ruined, by the arrival of a dropship and spotlights, illuminating the charred battlefield. Pelna ducks out of the light just as the hanger door opens and the thundering steps of an MA sound out. Nyx shoves himself in front of his prince, hand back to keep Noctis from moving forward. Even so, the prince sidesteps him and stands at his side, slouching and hobbling.

Center stage in all its glory stands a MA-X Patria. One of the worse MA-Xs out there. Nyx’s heart sinks and he can’t help but take a step back in fear. He has to admit to the fear. He’s seen MA-Xs kill so many people and take no damage. It was only by overwhelming it with numbers they could ever defeat one. Or, most of the time, just plain running away.

And here they are, the three of them. Pelna and Nyx who are exhausted and drained already. Noctis, the heaviest hitter of them all, injured and sinking back to his knees, the grip he’d tangled in the sleeve of Nyx’s jacket sliding off.

Even the arrival of the rest of their party isn’t enough to give him hope.

The Patria turns towards Nyx and Noctis. If it had a face it would be smirking something wicked. It raises an arm, the mechanism there moving and shifting until lightning crackles.

Nyx only manages a quick “_shit_!” before it slams the laser to the ground and engulfs the entire base in a devastating wave of electricity.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @mikkalia15  
twitter @mik_kal15  



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